Today I was listening to a 13 year old girl tell me about her life when she lived with her mother. She was telling me that she lived with her mom from the age 8 until about 2 months ago. During those 5 years she lived with her mother, she told me that she could not name a day that went by without someone in the household arguing or yelling. As she went into detail of the things she heard and saw, my heart broke. After she finished talking I told her that she's most likely going to struggle with being in an environment where there is no arguing and yelling everyday and that she will have the urge to begin arguments because this is what's normal to her. She paused for moment then looked at me with the look like a light bulb went off in her head and said, "I just realized that I do try to start arguments everyday."
It hurts me how misconstrued love has become. I'm praying that this new home will help this beloved child realize that love is not yelling and demeaning one another. Thankfully she's living with family members who are more stable and do not yell everyday at one another but I still worry. This isn't the first time I've been in a home where love is shown negatively. To see family members demean one another, call each other negative names, and to intentionally bring each other down really breaks my heart.
I looked up the definition of love in Webster's dictionary. It's listed as "to value highly; to feel a lovers passion, devotion, or tenderness for; to like or desire actively." In my opinion, this definition does not even come close to what love REALLY is. No wonder love is so belittled.
Love is meant to be so much more. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 gives the BEST definition of love: "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."
More people are not seeing real love in their homes. Like this little girl, the only way you know you are loved is if someone is yelling at you or calling you names. I know it break God's heart even more than mine to see his children have to live in these types of homes. It makes you stop and think when you're out in public. What do you do when you see someone broken down on the side of the road? Do you comment on what they should have done to prevent this from happening? What about when you see a man sitting on a park bench who has clearly not showered for weeks? Do you walk on by and comment on how much he smells? It's never really occurred to me until just now how we easily re-enforce this negative imagine of love to strangers everyday.
My challenge to myself and to others is to look at the world through hurting eyes. Listen to how you talk about random strangers on the street. Most likely, the negative things you are thinking or saying is just re-enforcing their mind set of what love is to them. Don't you think it's time to show them the love that God gives to us everyday?
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